Spotted Pigs and Green Tomatoes

by Rosie Boycott

  There's farmhouse cider, handmade chocolates and stone­ground flour from Burcott Mill. Next to the archway, there's delicious bread from the Thomas Bakery and Patisserie of Wells. Tina Thomas, a Pakistani who's lived in England for twenty-seven years, started the bakery three years ago after quitting her job in telecoms. Following a stint in Paris studying pastry cooking at the Ritz, she took a lease on an old hairdresser's shop in Wells. It is now her bakery, where she specialises in producing bread that has been fermented for between sixteen and twenty hours, which allows the yeast to metabolise fully. Tina's husband Paul helps with deliveries, but she sells most of her bread, croissants, Bath buns, smooth macaroons and saffron loaves through farmers' markets. 'I started baking at 1 a.m. this morning,' she says with a yawn, 'I finished by 8 a.m. Got here by nine. Market days are tough. But I'm doing well, I love having my own business, I love making food that's just how I want it to be.' Under the long open barn, there's a stall selling ewes' milk cheese. Their leaflet tells me that sheep's milk is both nutritious and delicious, containing twice the level of important minerals such as calcium, phosphorus and zinc, and B vitamins. By now I've collected a handful of leaflets, colourful and informative about the food and the process of making it: a great alternative to reading the contents on the back of a ready meal. Rose is doing good business too, signing copies of her book while Dominic, her husband, pockets the money. And there are lots of delicious things to eat: little bits of brown bread and butter, slithers of cheese, slices of sausages fried on small stoves and skewered with toothpicks, small glasses of cider and fresh apple juice, biscuits to dunk into homemade raspberry jam.

  In their modern incarnation, farmers' markets are barely a decade old. The phenomenon emerged in 1997 with a single fledgling market in Bath. Now 550 markets are thriving across the UK, generating a total of 8,000 market days. More than fifteen million people visit these markets each year, with 60 percent of customers going back regularly. There are no big advertising campaigns: farmers' markets rely on word of mouth, leaflets, temporary road signs, local media, tourist information and returning customers. There are few regulations, apart from a stipulation that all stall­holders actively farm or manufacture in the locality, and that everything they sell must have been home-grown, reared, cooked, brewed or baked. In 2002, farmers' markets earned producers a total of £166 million and for some stallholders it can mean an extra £20,000 worth of business. One unexpected boon from this remarkable growth is that up to 80 percent of neighbouring businesses have seen a boost in trade following the establishment of a market nearby. And they're not expensive, I realise as Charlie and I tour the stalls, sampling bits of cheese and sausage. As well as Andrew's salt marsh lamb, which we'll eat for dinner, we buy a circular goats' cheese called a Little Ryding, which weighs 220 grams and will last us for a week at least, a loaf of Tina's bread, a bottle of cider and one of cloudy apple juice, half a kilo of pork and apple sausages, and several jars of jam and local honey. In the nearby West Country town of Wincanton, a survey revealed that the seasonal purple sprouting broccoli on sale at the local Safeway was selling for £7.10 per kilo, nearly four times more expensive than the local organic farmers' market broccoli at £1.90 per kilo. In the same survey, imported Spanish carrots at the Stroud Tesco superstore were selling at 99P per bunch compared to 50p per bunch for the local carrots selling at Stroud farmers' market.

  The setting gives the market an old-fashioned feel, but there's nothing either old or exclusively middle-class about the shoppers. Many of them are having their lunch on the move at the same time as filling their baskets with weekend food. When the rural poor began moving into the cities in large numbers in the first half of the nineteenth century, many of them had no option but to eat on the street, as their homes had no cooking facilities. Street eating must have been a little similar to being at a farmers' market, and in London, which in the mid-1800s was home to 15 percent of the population, street food grew in popularity as choice and availability expanded. Strolling the city streets in the Victorian era you could have found hot eels, whelks, oysters, sheep's trotters, pea soup, fried fish, ham sandwiches, hot green beans, kidney puddings and baked potatoes. Sweet biscuits, gingernuts, fruit tarts, Chelsea buns, muffins and crumpets rounded off the meal, and drinks such as tea, coffee, cocoa, lemonade, peppermint water, rice milk and sherbets washed it all down.

  Here in Montacute the money is changing hands briskly. Before we leave, I track down the organiser, Elaine Spencer­White, to ask if we can have a stall in 2006. All the stallholders live and work on the Somerset Levels, the region of flatland between the Quantocks and the Mendips, with Glastonbury Tor standing proudly at its heart. Ilminster is on the extreme southern edge of the Levels, but Elaine reckons that we just qualify. However, the only slot left is for a stall to sell herbs. The rental will be £25 a day, or £120 for all six dates. So far we haven't pursued a speciality, but herbs seem like a good idea so we sign up straight away.

  Now it is mid-January 2006, under three months till the date of the first market, and we are sowing vast quantities of herb seeds: parsley, rosemary, thyme, basil, chervil, oregano, chives, mint and sorrel. I've found some research on the net which tells me that sales of fresh herbs have soared by 124 percent in the last five years to the value of £38 million. Despite the demand, the home market is lagging well behind. Most of us are buying our herbs from the supermarkets, in neat little plastic packets and grown in Israel, Spain and North Africa. And they're expensive: right now, a 109 pack of rosemary costs 75P in Tesco, which translates to an incredible £75 a kilo. Maybe we're on to a good thing, but how well they'll sell at Montacute is anyone's guess. Charlie thinks we probably need at least fifty of each, but that's pure guesswork. I like the idea of having a brochure for the nursery, so I've asked my friend Yseult Hughes to help write and design a booklet explaining how to grow each herb and including a recipe. We can sell them for £1 each and they'll be a good advertisement for the nursery.

  6

  The Nature of Soil

  We hold our first board meeting on 22 January 2006, sitting round our dining-room table after lunch. Charlie and I have now invested £70,000 in the farm, far more than we had intended a year ago, but then the farm is bigger and more diversified than we planned. It is clear that David's energies are scattering in different directions and we're worried that we're neglecting our core business. Our income is still incredibly small: a few hundred pounds from Dillington House, the same from the nearby Popp Inn, which buys our vegetables, and just over £300 that Kensington Place owe us for the eight geese before Christmas. Our outgoings are shooting up. On top of David's wages of £250 a week, we're now employing Bob on a month's trial for a possible full-time job at £180 a week. Adrian works a day and a half a week for £70, and David's mum, Anne, does six hours for £36. That makes the total wage bill £536 a week. On top of that, our monthly outgoing on animal food is £42.50 for pigs and the same for chickens, plus £21 on turkey food. Corn, which we buy in bulk from Dillington Farms, is an extra £20 every month. We also have bills for seeds (£350 for the year), compost (£500), sawdust (£150), plus all the extra capital costs that have been needed to build a second chicken shed, fence, gate, and prepare the new land, lay drainage pipes under the chicken run and the extremely muddy parts of the pig pens, and buy a computer. Most of these are one-off costs, but, even so, January turned into an expensive month, with Charlie writing a cheque for almost £6,500.

  The immediate financial returns don't look good. We have very few vegetables to sell, the pigs aren't yet fat enough to go to slaughter and the rare-breed chickens will not start laying till February. We've spent close to £1,000 on fruit trees. Some have been planted round the walls, others are positioned to grow on to wires stretched between eight-foot-high posts, standing in lines running north to south in the main garden. In years to come they will look beautiful, espaliered against the wires, with vegetables growing in between. Right now, they're thin and weedy­looking and it will be thre
e years before there is any fruit to sell and any chance of a financial return. Our plant stock is growing too, small cuttings of box, bay, hydrangeas, pitto­sporum and ivy, arranged in neat rows against the south wall. But, like the fruit trees, there's not going to be much to sell this year and, as yet, we don't have an outlet which will take our plants. I phoned the local organic farm shop to ask if they would be interested and they didn't even bother to return the call. It's clear that, certainly until the spring, we will have to underwrite the wages. But David is still confident that we'll be breaking even by June and possibly making a small profit. On paper at least, this certainly looks like a real possibility. But I can tell that Charlie is feeling a little gloomy. The economy Mercedes has now become a top-of-the-range model and we're adding extras all the time. Between ourselves we've agreed a limit of £80,000 as a total investment, but I also know that we will go on forking out money beyond that. But till when? It is impossible to imagine not paying the wages one month, but the finances need to turn a corner soon.

  The best news at the start of the year is that the chickens have gone from laying thirty-five eggs a day to seventy-five and then over a hundred. It happened in a matter of days and the only explanation we can come up with is that the blue drainage pipes which we've installed under the yard are doing their job and the chickens now have dry feet. I think they look happier, but this is probably wishful thinking and more connected to the fact that I no longer see them as just a mass of feathers, each bird indistinguishable from the other, but more as individuals. All animals are like that: the longer you watch them, the more they emerge as themselves. Like the supposed silence of the countryside which you come to realise is always full of the sounds of animals and birds or wind rustling through trees, or like the signs of spring, so absent from London but all around us in January: the shoots of leaves, the pushing of bulbs and the first lambs standing in the chill January air.

  Josh discovered that the chickens are keen on sprouts, of which we currently have plenty of rejects. Chuck one into a group of birds and their heads bob up and down trying to find the small green ball. Then you notice that one bird has crouched down and is running as hard as it can, pushing through the mass of legs and feathers towards the outside of the scrum. Bursting into the open with the sprout firmly in its beak, it puts it down and takes a huge peck of leaves. By that time, the other chickens have noticed and the scrum formation is reassembled round the lucky bird. The game starts all over again.

  Along the back wall of the chicken coop, nesting boxes open on to lidded metal trays attached to the outside of the hut. It makes for easy collecting. The mostly clean, sometimes still­warm eggs roll on to the trays, where it is a simple process to collect them. In the last few days, I've picked up over fifty eggs in one go. Inside the coop, a few chickens still seem to prefer sitting on the sawdust in the corner and laying there. Their black eyes study you fiercely when you go in to see whether any eggs are rolling around on the ground. But it does seem to be the case that happy chickens are productive chickens: not much different from human beings.

  After the war, when servicemen were struggling to re-enter civvy street, one of their options was starting a smallholding. I have a copy of a splendid book called Livings from the Land, written in 1947 by S. A. Maycock. Mr Maycock was the proud owner of a smallholding and he writes with affection about his vegetables and birds. Even on his Sunday afternoons off he chooses to spend his time with his chickens. 'Having eaten our modest meal of rationed meat, we don't rush around too much, but take an extra look at the baby pullets. Now, as we sit on the floor on the peat-moss litter, my wife smoking her cigarette and I my pipe, the chickens jump all over us, and we are all friends together - and this is the state of affairs when you get the very best results, for it is surely work for love's sake.'

  I am sure that the chickens would not appreciate having me in their midst smoking a cigarette, but at the end of the middle week of January the eggs are piling up and we are suddenly confronted with a new problem: we have an excess. Dillington House has over-estimated its egg demand. Instead of the 750 a week we thought they wanted, they have announced that they can take only 300. So, on Saturday morning, I go to ask Mr Bonner if he wants the surplus. He doesn't: he already has an egg supplier and it would upset the delicate status quo between producer and supplier if he started taking ours. I mill around in the busy Saturday morning queue while he calls his friend at the Shrubbery Hotel, but it turns out that he has just done a new deal with a local supplier and is happy with his arrangement. Feeling more than a little crazy, I go down the street to John Rendell, the greengrocer. He doesn't want any either. I catch sight of my reflection in a store window: I look like a mad middle-aged woman, in a muddy coat, having a bad hair day. What on earth am I doing? This is a pathetic way to run a business. We need proper contracts: wandering around town like a travelling salesman trying to flog bibles is a good joke, but it isn't solving the problem.

  Rescue comes from Rowley Leigh, our friend who is chef at Kensington Place restaurant. He will have 300 and, if he likes them, maybe this could become a regular order. So, on Sunday night, Charlie and I load 300 eggs on to the back seat of the Land Rover and deliver them to the storeroom at the back of the restaurant on our way to our London home. I attach an invoice for £40, deciding that I can write off the delivery costs as we are going that way anyway.

  In early February some of the chickens fall ill. First one, then another, develops runny eyes and becomes weak and lethargic. They stand around in the coop, heads down or under their wings, their feathers limp and dusty. Over three days, six die. David isolates the sick ones, sixteen of them, in a separate shed and adds a broad-based antibiotic to their water supply. The vet says we need to take one of the dead chickens to DEFRA at Langford House in Bristol for autopsy. We all have only one thought: bird flu.

  Avian flu had been making its way from Asia, to Turkey and into Africa. It seemed a distant problem, but then, in the middle of February, the potentially deadly strain of HSNI was detected in four European countries, carried by swans who had been driven south by the freezing weather in northern Europe. Over one weekend infected swans are found in Italy, Bulgaria, Greece and Slovenia. So far, the disease is confined to swans and has not crossed over to domestic fowl. The Italian minister of health, Francesco Storace, says that the strain of flu that has been responsible for more than ninety deaths in Asia has been found in dead swans in Sicily. Twenty­one swans were infected by the virus, five of them with a virulent form. The Italians establish two-mile protection zones round each of the outbreaks and all poultry within the zones must be kept indoors and moved only to travel to a slaughterhouse. The Italians say they are not worried about human health, but avian flu is spread by migrating birds and we are just approaching the start of the major migrations. Although February is early for birds to be taking to the skies, it is possible. I have a vision of our little farm being screened off from the world, of men in white coats, with masks on their faces, wearing white wellingtons, cramming our chickens into incinerators.

  DEFRA takes three days to pronounce on the chicken: not avian flu, just a bronchial virus, which has most likely been caused by the recen t long stretch of sustained very cold weather. The nights have been freezing for almost six weeks now, with the temperatures going down to minus 6°C on occasions. Mr Rendell the greengrocer says that he can't remember such sustained cold since the winter of '63 and, before that, the winter of '47, when his father's car had frozen to the road.

  The DEFRA vet prescribes a course of Tylan Soluble for the remaining sick chickens, but by the time the virus is under control we have lost twenty-four birds and twenty-two are on medication. Even though they start laying again before reaching the end of the antibiotic course, the eggs cannot be eaten as it is against the law to sell an egg laid by a chicken on medication.

  The rare breeds are well into their laying season and our smart new incubator arrives just in time to hatch the newly fertile eggs. It ca
n hold eighty eggs at a time, keeping them at exactly 37.2°C and 45 percent humidity. It takes five days for the incubator to reach the right temperature, where it will now stay, apparently ad infinitum, provided there isn't a power cut. There are sixteen eggs - Leghorns, New Hollands and Barn­velders - in the small incubator that are due to hatch on 16 February. David made a mistake with our last batch because he removed the chicks immediately they had hatched, thus minutely, but crucially, changing the temperature for those still inside their eggs and, more importantly, altering nature's ordered progress. Chicks live for their first twenty-four hours on the remaining yolk sac, which provides essential minerals and vitamins to the baby bird. Once they drink on their own, this process is fatally disrupted.